Data on Food from US Department of Agriculture

I’m a little obsessed with data visualization. I’ve been trying to learn about collecting, formating and displaying data recently, after exploring the beautiful and communicative visuals created on Many Eyes. Below is a visualization I created using data on organic farming from the US Department of Agriculture.

I came across a table ranking the number of organic farms by state while scouring the web for data to visualize. I was totally amazed by the amount of data and information that government websites have about things related to the foods Americans grow, raise, buy, sell and eat. I’m especially taken with Amber Waves, a publication of the USDA Economic Research Service. ERS puts together amazing reports, like the one about the competition between traditional grocery stores, megastores, and other food retailers. The graphic below is taken from that article.

I’m pretty psyched to explore datasets and publications by other agencies to find food-related content.